Crossbones
by Hansar
Summary: Countless pirates have tried to claim the mantle of Pirate King during the years after Gold Rogers death. All have failed, with only an exceptional few not forgotten by history. Lai Shih and her crew, the Skeleton Pirates refuse to share the same fate. They'll carve their names into world's memory and won't let anything stand in their way.


Chapter 1:

The pirates who were brought into the Marine bounty office were all varying degrees of brutalized. They were all chained together at the neck, wrists and, ankles with heavy white manacles and were being led into the building by a grinning teenage girl.

The marine manning the front desk took in the scene with a look of slight disbelief. The girl didn't really look as though she could have beaten a whole crew by herself. She wasn't much taller than five feet and while the parts of her body the marine could see (which was most of it, all she wore was a black tube top and matching hotpants) were muscular (and also heavily tattooed with assorted gothic imagery), some members of the pirate crew must have weighed at least three times what she did. She didn't even carry any weapons.

"I'm here to collect on these bounties," the girl said, "This is "Rust-Axe" Booth and his crew. How much am I owed?"

"Hold on let me check," said the marine rifling through the bounty files. "Alright," he said as he found the posters. "That's 6 million for Booth, 1 million for his first mate and there aren't any other bounties here. Is this his entire crew?"

"Three died in the fight but there weren't any who escaped".

"Alright, then you get 100K for each crew member so that's 8.8 million altogether," The marine counted out the money and handed it to the girl who handed him the chain attached to the captain's neck. It wasn't made of metal.

"Is this seastone?" the marine asked, feeling the chain. It didn't seem likely; the World Government didn't allow seastone to be privately owned and it would be completely unnecessary to use on this crew. But he couldn't think of anything else that the restraints could be.

"Nope," said the girl, her grin growing even wider. She held out her hand and a white key grew out of her finger. "It's bone." She tossed the key at the marine who caught it, fumbling. So, the girl had eaten a Devil Fruit, that answered the mystery of her victory at least.

" So," the girl asked, cheerfully "are there any good bounties in the area."

"A couple," the marine said as he unshackled the pirates and locked them in the holding cells. "Cusack and the Red Sail Pirates have been pillaging Sorba Town to the west for about a week and "Turncoat" Ryuuzaki's been spotted on that island as well. They're both worth more than this lot put together."

"I've heard of Cusack but who's this Turncoat guy?"

"A former Marine commander. He killed his captain for some reason and escaped from jail. He's been on the run ever since and killing any pirate or Marine he comes across."

"Sounds interesting, I'll check him out," The girl said, taking copies of each of their bounty posters.

"You might want to be quick about it. One'll probably kill the other pretty soon and Cusack's been in that town for a while so there'll be Marines there soon as well."

"Thanks for the info. I'll probably see you in a few days after I've caught these two. By the way, my name's Lai Shih" and with that the girl left, whistling a tune.

The marine hoped she'd be alright. Devil Fruit or not, Cusack and Ryuuzaki were in a different league than Booth.

**CB**

Lai Shih returned to the town's dock as quickly as she could. Upon reaching her small boat she uncovered a small chest covered with a tarp, unlocked it and dumped her recently acquired bounty money into it.

There was getting to be a fairly tidy sum in there by this point but not enough for her purposes. She had gathered about 35M Berry by this point and while that was impressive for only a month's bounty hunting it wasn't enough to buy a Grand Line worthy ship.

If Shih was being honest with herself, the start of her pirate career wasn't going as well as she'd hoped. Not only did she not have a ship she hadn't found a single crew member yet. Shih had thought bounty hunting would be a good way to go about finding them, after all, people with bounties were almost by definition dangerous and unlikely to be opposed to joining a pirate crew.

While she had certainly found a few people, who would have been willing she had yet to find anyone she thought was worth recruiting. She hadn't felt the slightest amount of challenge fighting any of them and that wouldn't do at all. Shih was going to be the Pirate Queen, there was no space for cannon fodder on her crew.

However, with her new target, she felt hopeful. Ryuuzaki had a very impressive price on his head for someone who was both new and alone. The fact that he went around murdering pirates was admittedly a problem, but Shih felt it was worth a try.

The same could not be said for Cusack, he'd been around and doing the same thing for years. Nobody of any worth or ambition would be on his crew, but Shih wasn't one to turn down 16M for an afternoon's work.

Settling into her boat, Shih rowed out of the harbour and set her course for Sorba Town. Once her boat was properly oriented, matter started sprouting from the hard, white sandals she wore.

The bones grew into two large paddle wheels on each side of the boat attached to pedals on Shih's feet. She started pedalling hard and, aided by the wind, the boat moved with good speed towards her destination. Shih knew she was in for several exhausting hours, but she didn't want to waste any time.

**CB**

About five hours of sailing later, Shih finally caught sight of Sorba town and she saw what she was certain was Cusack's ship in the harbour. It was a decently sized frigate with blood-red sails from which the crew and captain derived their name. Shih had heard that their plan had originally been to paint the sails red with blood but that had ended quickly because doing that was impractical, unhygienic and a massive pain in the arse. So, Cusack just said he did that and dyed the sails normally. He at least got an epithet out of it, so it hadn't been a completely wasted effort.

Shih briefly entertained the notion of stealing the ship when she was done on this island. Cusack's ship looked to be of pretty good quality to her untrained eye, but she quickly discarded the idea. It might have been superstitious of her, but she was always told that it was bad luck to steal a ship that you wanted to keep for yourself.

It was something her parents had taught her. If you stole a ship that was cared for by its owners, then it would resent you and your voyages would always suffer misfortune. Since Shih's parents had been successful pirates for years and claimed they'd seen it happen multiple times, Shih was willing to err on the side of caution.

Shih beached her ship a mile or two outside of the town. She wanted to find Ryuuzaki before taking on Cusack's crew, there was a pretty decent chance of Ryuuzaki trying to kill her when she tried to recruit him, and she didn't want to be tired from fighting when it happened.

The main problem Shih faced now was that she didn't know where Ryuuzaki was or how to find him other than attacking Cusack and hoping that would draw him out. Even then there was a risk that he'd just leave when he saw her winning.

Shih supposed that she could just stake out the town and wait for Ryuuzaki to attack the pirates himself, but she had no idea how long that would take, and Shih had never liked waiting around doing nothing.

Shih concluded that her best option was to just try asking the locals if they'd seen Ryuuzaki. Even if they hadn't it would give her something to do while she waited for him to attack Cusack.

Admittedly, Shih worried that it might not be that easy finding the locals either. While pirates usually only attacked coastal towns and left the surrounding villages alone, Cusack had been on this island for several days and his crew might have tried to see if there was anything worth taking after the town had been picked clean. Or to see if the fleeing town residents had taken any good valuables with them during their escape.

Luck appeared to be on Shih's side though as the first village she found appeared relatively unmolested. Even more luckily one of the people there had seen Ryuuzaki, however, the man wasn't particularly forthcoming about the details.

"I might have seen him. Who's asking?", the man said after Shih showed him the picture she'd cut out from Ryuuzaki's bounty poster. The man looked more than a bit worse for wear and seemed to have been wearing the same set of clothes for several days. Shih guessed that he was a refugee from the town whose escape had been fairly narrow.

Shih considered her words carefully. The truth was right out, the man probably wouldn't tell a pirate anything on principle and if the man was reluctant to talk, he might not want harm coming to Ryuuzaki. If Shih said she was looking to capture him, the man might refuse to tell her anything.

Shih decided to be ambiguous, "I'm a bounty hunter".

"Why the hell are you looking for him then?"

"I want to ask him if he's willing to team up with me and help me take down Cusack. Then possibly discuss a longer-term partnership," Shih felt that was a safe thing to say. The man was unlikely to have any objections to that goal. The man gave her a measuring look and then finally answered.

"I met him yesterday in the forest outside the town. I tried sneaking back over there to see if the pirates were still around, but I got spotted and three of them chased me into the woods. They caught me but before they could start anything the guy you're looking for appeared, killed them all in a couple of seconds. Just appeared out of nowhere, shot two of them in the head and stabbed the last one in the neck. They were dead before I realised what was happening."

"Is he still in the forest? Whereabouts did you meet him?" Shih asked, excited to finally have a lead.

"Pretty much due east of here but I'm not sure if he's still in that area. I think he's watching the town and picking off any pirates who try to leave. It would explain why I haven't heard of any of the other villages being attacked."

"That can't last too long, Cusack's going to notice when his men don't come back from raids," Shih noted. "Welp. Guess I'll have to find him first then. Thanks for your help" She said to the man as she began running towards the forest.

"If you want to thank me get rid of those pirates." The man called after her "Good luck to you girl!"

**CB**

Shih strolled through Sorba town's deserted streets, carrying a backpack full of rocks. The streets were completely deserted, apart from the occasional stray animal. It looked like the Red Sail pirates had finished the majority of their looting and were likely now enjoying the spoils they'd found.

The most common method of this enjoyment pirates had was drinking the town dry of all its booze and judging by the raucous shouting Shih heard as she crept towards the bar, this crew was no exception.

Shih hid behind the street corner in front of the bar, waiting for her moment. The moment took longer than she would have liked to appear but eventually, the sounds coming from inside the bar increased briefly, then returned to normal, signifying that someone had, at last, come outside.

Shih then tried to creep, hurriedly, across the street and made a show of freezing, in apparent terror, as a voice called out, "What's in the bag, girl?".

Shih turned her head towards the voice and saw three pirates looking at her, all with unpleasant grins. She bolted, running down the street towards the edge of town and the forest. She wasn't running anywhere near as fast as she could have done, but then she wasn't actually trying to escape from these idiots.

"There's no need to run girl, just give us the bag then you can go on your merry way!" the one that had first called out to her yelled. Shih held back a snort. She rather doubted that her supposed valuables would be all the likes of them would want from a girl, in her opinion, as pretty as she was. Of course, if they ever were in a position to take liberties with her, they'd be in for a nasty surprise. A surprise with teeth, specifically. The Bone-Bone Fruit had many applications.

Shih finally reached the forest and ran between the trees. She'd let the pirates gradually close the distance between them and now they were nearly on top of her. A few minutes later she tripped herself on a tree root and sprawled on the ground with a yelp of pain. Shih heard laughter behind her and then felt someone's foot shoving her head into the dirt.

"Quite a chase you gave us girl," the lead pirate said. "You'd better hope the stuff in the bag was worth all this trouble". He slipped the backpack off Shih's shoulders and grunted in surprise at its weight. "What the hell have you got in here? Rocks?"

Before he could discover how accurate his guess was, there was an ear-splitting bang, a spray of blood and bits of brain and the pirate fell to the ground. His two companions yelled in horror and rage, hands going for their swords but before they could even draw them, a figure swooped down from the trees, moving with incredible speed. The figure cracked one of them in his temple with the butt of his rifle then sank the guns bayonet deep into the pirate's stomach then tore it free. The pirate collapsed, unconscious to the ground, his guts spilling out of his abdomen.

The figure turned to the last pirate, who'd just managed to unsheathe his sword and stabbed with the bayonet, going for his heart. The thrust was deflected by a desperate parry, but this didn't help the pirate. A small white projectile buried itself in his jugular, causing a huge spray of blood. The pirate gurgled and fell to the ground, clutching his throat, trying to stem the tide, but his wound was fatal.

"Phalange Bullet," Shih said. She grinned and mimed blowing imaginary smoke off the barrel of the finger-gun she'd been pointing at the pirate. "You must be Ryuuzaki," she said, looking the man who'd "saved" her up and down. He was older than Shih was by a year or two and considerably taller, pushing 6 feet. Apart from his boots and skin everything about him was grey: his hair, eyes, shirt, trousers, and coat. None of them were quite the same shade though. His hair was long and tied back with a piece of string, it had the look of formerly short hair that hadn't seen scissors for a long time. Indeed, most of the man didn't look like it had seen basic luxuries for quite a while.

"Yeah, that's me," he said. His tone and stance weren't overtly hostile, but they certainly weren't relaxed or friendly. "Were you trying to lure me out? What do you want?"

"My name's Lai Shih and I'm here to make a recruitment pitch. I want you to join my pirate crew." Shih said, her smile not faltering as Ryuuzaki levelled his rifle at her.

"I know I've got a bounty on my head now, but I used to be a marine and I'm as dedicated to killing pirates as ever, so my answer is obviously no. Now there are three things I'd like you to explain to me. One: why you thought I'd be willing to become a pirate. Two: why I shouldn't just shoot you between the eyes and three: how you killed that guy," Ryuuzaki said, his eyes flickering to the pirate on the ground who'd bled out and stopped breathing while they'd been talking.

"For number two I haven't actually committed or attempted to commit any crimes yet so shooting me would still be unjustified murder. It wouldn't work either my skulls bulletproof. Number three was a trick my Devil Fruit lets me do. I'm a bone-woman." As Shih said this the bones of her face pushed out through the sides of her head and joined together over her face into a leering skull-like mask. Ryuuzaki frowned but otherwise didn't comment. He'd likely dealt with devil Fruits before.

"As for your first question," Shih said, taking off her mask and letting it fall to the ground, "All I knew about you was that you were a rogue marine who killed his captain and escaped execution and you're now going around killing people. There could be all sorts of reasons behind that, you could've just been a psycho. What matters is you're strong and from what I've seen so far, not a psycho, so I want you on my crew."

"My answer's still no. Now go away, I've got pirates to kill." Ryuuzaki said, curtly as he slung his rifle over his back and started to walk away. Undeterred, Shih followed and quickly fell into step beside him.

"You could still kill pirates as part of my crew you know? Just not the other members. I'd even be willing to help you do it. It would be weeding out the competition."

"I don't need any help and even if I did, I wouldn't sell out my principles, by working with pirates, to get it."

"Maybe you don't need help for fights like this, but you could be doing so much more," Shih said. "I saw you fight just then; the likes of Cusack and his men are beneath you. If you've turned against the marines, why are you even still doing this anyway?"

"Because I want this 'Golden Age of Piracy' to end!" He spat the words out. Clearly disgusted by the term. "Every pirate who dies a meaningless death makes piracy look less appealing. Cusack may not be much but he still needs to go. There are a lot of people everywhere in this world who need to be killed and I don't trust the marines to do it. The marines are on the 'to kill' list too."

"Well, this is your lucky day! Join my crew and ending the Golden Age is exactly what we'll be doing. With me you'll be killing the Emperors, the Warlords and the worst scum the Marines have to offer," Shih said excitedly. This seemed like a good angle to try convincing him from. "I'm not asking you to help me fuck around in the West Blue, looting towns in the arse-end of nowhere. I want you to help me find One Piece!"

Ryuuzaki stopped and stared at her, his expression shifting from annoyance to incredulity. "You can't expect me to believe that. Nobody tries to be pirate king anymore. The One Piece was just something Gold Roger came up with as a last 'fuck you' to the World Government."

"It doesn't matter if there's no treasure, what matters is getting to Raftel, where it's supposed to be. If we can prove we reached it then it doesn't matter if there's nothing there, we could claim Roger left a coin there, or something, as a symbol."

"There's something you're overlooking," Ryuuzaki said, as he resumed walking. "I want to bring an end to piracy. Finding One Piece would inspire even more idiots and bastards to head out to sea."

"No it wouldn't," Shih said with a smug smile on her face. "I'm not going to leave my own treasure for people to find. I'm not just going to be the second in a long list of pirate kings and queens. If there's no way for me to have a successor then no one's going to become a pirate to try. Hell, I might even just destroy Raftel, then nobody can ever claim to have truly conquered the Grand Line again!"

Ryuuzaki stayed silent, gazing at her consideringly. Eventually, the pair of them walked into a small clearing that Ryuuzaki must have been using as his base. There wasn't much there: a one-man tent, a small campfire pit with a cooking pot over it and some laundry (also grey) drying on a tree branch. Ryuuzaki took off his coat and laid it on a large log in front of the fire pit, leaned his rifle against the log, sat down between them and finally responded.

"You're living in the past. That might have lowered piracy a decade ago but it won't now. I told you earlier, no one tries to be the pirate king anymore, they just want to steal and hurt people these days."

"Maybe, but like I told you earlier if we're going to find One Piece we'll have to kill the emperors. With them out of the way the Marines ought to have a lot more resources available. That'll knock down piracy numbers," Shih said as she sat down in front of the fire, opposite Ryuuzaki. As she did so bones sprouted from her lower back growing into the shape of a chair. It finished growing the very instant Shih ended her sitting motion.

"How long did you spend getting the timing of that little trick down?" asked Ryuuzaki, with a raised eyebrow. "Anyway, I don't want the marines to have more power either. If there's no pirates to kill they'll just start doing evil shit to innocent people instead, for showing the slightest opposition to them. The bastards just want to keep their power." Ryuuzaki's face was darkening with every word he spoke. It was clear to Shih that if anything he had an even bigger axe to grind with the World Government than he did with pirates.

"What exactly made you go rogue anyway?" Shih asked, leaning towards Ryuuzaki. She assumed must have been quite something to inspire that level of vitriol for a cause he'd once believed in.

"That's none of your business!" Ryuuzaki snapped, glaring at Shih.

"You're a wanted man, I can find out by myself what your crimes were," Shih said, smiling in the face of his anger. "Besides if I don't like your reasons I won't want to recruit you, so I'll leave you alone."

"Well that's a good enough reason," he snarked. "Fine, I'll tell you. But only if you tell me something first." Ryuuzaki leaned forward and fixed Shih with a hard stare. "Why do you want to be Pirate Queen? You said you don't just want to the second in a list of pirate kings but why do you want to be one at all? You've said it's not about the treasure."

"It's because I want to be like Roger," Shih said. "It's been twenty years since he died and everybody still lives in awe of him. How many other pirates can claim that? They're lucky if people still talk about them after a few months when they die. If I'm just the first person who takes up his legacy, I'll be forgotten as soon as the next one comes along. I won't let anyone forget who I am and the things I'm gonna do. I'm gonna shake the world so much that even after a thousand years everyone will know my name!"

"You want to be famous?" Ryuuzaki asked. He sounded as if he wasn't sure he'd understood her correctly.

"Not famous. I wanna be _legendary_! The kind of person, people can barely believe was even real," Shih said, clenching her fist in determination. "Okay, it's your turn now," She said. Looking expectantly at Ryuuzaki.

"Alright," Ryuuzaki sighed "Just don't interrupt me," he leaned back and began his story.

"Me and my unit had been tracking down a pirate who managed to escape while we were fighting the rest of his crew. We found trying to lie low on his home island, his brother was sheltering him. The brother knew the guy was a pirate and when we came by to arrest them both, they and the brother's wife tried to fight us instead of surrender. Obviously, they failed and they all got killed."

"When we'd collected the bodies and were about to leave the brother's son came down the stairs. Kid couldn't have been more than seven. Guess they must have told him to hide up there and keep quiet. When saw what had happened he started crying, yelling at us to let his parents go, I said to him 'you're parents and uncle were criminals and are getting what they deserve, let this be a lesson not to repeat their mistakes.' The kid flipped out at that, started trying to attack me, shouting that I was a liar, you know, normal stuff. Then my captain shot him through the fucking head!" Ryuuzaki roared the last statement at the top of his lungs. Before that, his tone had been dry and completely matter-of-fact like the whole thing had been a scenario he dealt with every day.

"When I asked my captain to explain he said 'The boy's family were all criminals and he committed assault against a marine officer. The sentence for that can be nothing other than death.'" Ryuuzaki's voice had gone back to being level but his expression was still thunderous. Then he smirked. "I disagreed. That boy hadn't done anything wrong and that made my captain a murderer. So, I did what my duty to Absolute Justice commanded and slashed his fucking throat."

"How'd the rest of your men take you doing that?" Shih asked.

"Didn't I fucking tell you not to interrupt me?" Ryuuzaki snapped, shooting a glare at Shih. "Well they made a lot of noise but all of them together couldn't have taken me in a fight and they knew it, so they shut up and went along with it."

"I thought that was the end of it but they must have gone squealing to the brass because next thing I know I'm being court-martialled. Apparently murdering innocent, defenceless children isn't a crime if a marine does it and I'm declared guilty of mutiny and sentenced to death." Ryuuzaki exhaled loudly and leaned forward, staring into the remains of the fire.

"What really got to me though was that no-one spoke in my defence. My entire unit was there as witnesses and not a single bastard in the entire room thought I'd done the right thing!" His voice was getting louder and more heated with every word he spoke, his fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles were completely white.

"I saw what the Marines really were then! They're just pirates with a veneer of legitimacy! If you're wearing a white coat with fucking justice written on it, you can do whatever the fuck you like as long as they aren't hurt!" As Ryuuzaki said this he grabbed his coat and stared at the back of it with a hateful expression. Shih peered at the coat too, she could make out faint lettering, darker than the rest of the fabric. She was certain it spelt the word 'Justice'. Ryuuzaki's head looked up and he stared right into Shih's eyes.

"So I killed them," he said, his tone completely calm again. "I grabbed the weapons off one of the guards and I killed every cunt in that room. Then I killed every other marine in that building I came across, escaped and went on the run. Now I'm here."

"So," he said. Giving Shih a mocking smile, "are you satisfied with my little story? Or would you like to hear about my childhood as well?"

"Nope! I've decided! I definitely want you on my crew." Shih said giving a wide grin. Ryuuzaki's smile vanished and was replaced with the same look of annoyance he'd sported for most of the conversation. "The way it seems to me is that you won't associate with something you consider evil. I've got no problem enforcing standards of behaviour on my crew. If it'll get you onboard I'll put down rules like 'no killing civilians' and 'no pillaging defenceless towns'. It's not as if I was really planning on doing that and I wouldn't much like having people with that as their main drive on my crew anyway. Join me and you'll actually make a difference in the world!" Shih held out her hand for Ryuuzaki to shake. He didn't take it.

"I'm making a difference here," Ryuuzaki said. His expression was as hard as ever but Shih was sure she was starting to get through to him. He was trying to convince himself of that statement as much as he was her.

"You're not making a difference Ryuuzaki, at least not one anybody who doesn't live on this tiny island will ever know or care about," Shih's smile had gone and she was looking at Ryuuzaki as hard as he was looking at her. "Let me ask you something Ryuuzaki. How old are you? 18?"

"17. Why?" he replied, looking slightly caught out by this change in topic.

"17 and you were already a marine commander. You don't get given a rank like that at your age without big ambitions even if you are strong." Shih stated confidently her smile returning. Or at least she assumed that was the case. She imagined that a military organisation wouldn't give that much authority to people that age without a lot of confidence in them. "Your plan wasn't to do small stuff here in the West Blue, hunting no-name pirates, making the world a better place one small step at a time. You were gonna go to the Grand Line. You were gonna fight people who actually mattered. Do things that would impact the whole world. Am I wrong?"

"... Maybe not," Ryuuzaki eventually conceded. Shih breathed an internal sigh of relief. She definitely would have lost him if she had actually been wrong with her amateur psychoanalysis. "You're right that I wanted to kill the big names. The ones that inspire pirates the world over. But I don't need you to help me achieve that. I can get to the Grand Line without becoming a pirate or associating with them."

"Not in the position you're in, you can't," Shih said with a slow shake of her head. "You can't go to the Grand line alone, nobody can. Not even Gold Roger did it. The only people who go to the Grand line are pirates and Marines and I'm pretty much the only person from either of those groups who'll bring a rogue Marine with them."

"What exactly is stopping me from gathering a group of my own? I could find people who hate pirates as much as I do and can see the Marines for what they are and get to the Grand Line that way," Ryuuzaki asked.

"Because the overlap between the group of people who want to purge the world of pirates, the people who want to purge it of Marines and the people who are crazy enough to try it with a single crew is probably just you," Shih said, pointing at Ryuuzaki. "And you must know that, or you'd have already tried. Your only real option is a crew of ambitious but fairly benign pirates, i.e. me." Shih held out her hand to him once again.

"I'm your last chance to fulfil your dreams Ryuuzaki. If it makes it more palatable to you, you can consider yourself to be cooperating with me rather than joining my crew. What's it gonna be?"

Ryuuzaki sat quietly for a while and then said "You know, you've talked a big game this entire time, about changing the world and becoming Pirate Queen. But I haven't even seen you fight yet. For all I know, working with you would be a total waste of my time."

Shih grinned, "Well there's an easy solution to that. How about we go into the town and I'll give you a demonstration?"

They both froze as they heard a several soft, distinctive, metallic clicks in the trees around the clearing. They both knew the sound of flintlocks being readied when they heard it.

Both of them immediately sprang into motion barely a second before the bullets started flying. Ryuuzaki grabbed his rifle and leapt upwards, grabbing onto a tree branch that was hanging out above him. He then jumped, again and again, climbing higher into the dense foliage until he was practically out of sight.

Shih did the opposite. She fell to the ground and curled up into a ball. As she did so great plates of bone grew from Shih's arms and back, protecting her from the bullets that found their mark. Shih then slowly stood up, bones growing to cover her torso and legs as well. She had again grown the skull-like mask over her face.

"That was a nice try!" Shih called out "So, are you all just going to keep hiding behind the trees or are you going to come and face me now you know sneak attacks won't work?"

In response, several more shots came at her but the only two that hit her just pinged harmlessly off her breastplate. But slowly figures came into the clearing. There had to have been at least 30 of them, all of them armed and looking apprehensive but still very, very angry.

Shih recognised the man standing directly in front of her. He was tall, grey-haired and wore a long blood-red coat. There was a sword attached to his left hip and several flintlocks on his belt. All in all, Red Sail Cusack looked like the results of someone with very little imagination who was asked to draw a pirate captain. He gave Shih a smile which did not reach his eyes.

"Good afternoon miss," he said politely. "Would I be correct in assuming that you and your friend are the ones responsible for the disappearances of my men?" If he was at all intimidated by Shih's use of her Devil Fruit he hid it far better than his men did.

"You're half right, I only got here today, the earlier ones were Ryuuzaki's handiwork," Shih replied. She then glanced up into the forest canopy "Also Ryuuzaki I hope you haven't just fucked off to let me handle them on my own, because if you have next time I see you I'll stab you in the face." To punctuate her point Shih reshaped the shield on her right arm into a long, wickedly sharp blade.

In place of an answer, there was a loud bang from above and one of the pirates dropped dead. The responses from the rest of the Red Sail crew were either screaming in fear and diving for cover behind the trees or roars of outrage and wild shots in the rough direction the bullet had come from.

"Good to know you've got my back" Shih called out, giving a thumbs up in a random direction. She had no more idea of where Ryuuzaki was lurking than the pirates did. "By the way, while I'm fine with you killing the peons, could you leave Cusack alive, I want to cash his bounty in when this is all over."

"Wanted corpses are still worth money," Ryuuzaki's said. His voice coming from almost directly behind where Shih was facing. Shih turned her back on Cusack so she could properly address Ryuuzaki.

"Yeah, but it's only half and-" BANG. The bullet bounced off the back of Shih's skull. A normal bullet would have had better luck getting through a foot of solid steel than Shih's inhumanly dense bones but it still left a bleeding cut.

Shih turned back to Cusack rubbing her head. Her skull mask's features reshaping into a frown.

"Ow," she said. She made a finger gun and pointed it at Cusack. "My turn. Phalange Bullet!" The small white projectile burst at of her fingertip and shot at Cusack who only barely got his sword up in time to prevent it hitting him in the shoulder. Cusack's expression was still calm but Shih could see the hint of apprehension in his eyes. He likely hadn't dealt with many Devil Fruit users before and he almost certainly hadn't had to fight one with a power as strong as Shih's.

"I apologise for the sneak attack," Cusack said "but it was just too good an opportunity to let slip me by. I hope you don't take it personally."

"Not at all, I'd have done the same," Shih said. Her skull mask had changed back into a grin. "Would it be too much to ask you to not take us capturing you and killing all your crew personally too?"

"I'm afraid it would be. Kill them both!" Cusack's relaxed demeanour vanished in a second as he charged towards Shih with a snarl. With only the briefest hesitation his men did the same. Some bellowing and charging at Shih with their weapons swinging others climbing the trees or pointing their guns upwards hoping to spot Ryuuzaki.

"Okay Ryuuzaki, feel free to go nuts," Shih yelled out. She pointed her arms towards two of pirates and shouted "Ulna Spear!" The bones protruding from her arms narrowed to sharp points and lengthened rapidly impaling the pirates clean through the chest. Shih retracted the bones again and brought her right arm around to parry the strikes from Cusack's sword.

Cusack attacked Shih with everything he had, his sword slashing and stabbing at any part of Shih's body that looked in any way unarmored. But Shih expertly thwarted any effort he made, any strike that got past her guard was stopped by new bone erupting from her skin to render it harmless and Cusack always received a worse hit himself each time it happened.

Cusack's guns were of no help to him either, Shih disarmed him twice before he could even get a shot off. Once he thought he'd achieved victory when he fired a bullet point-blank into Shih's eye but it just glanced harmlessly off the dense bone mesh that had instantly grown to cover both of Shih's eyeholes. Any other hits were grazes at best and only happened when Cusack's crew provided distractions, but that was a rapidly dwindling resource.

A pirate came at Shih's left side, trying to slash at her seemingly unprotected neck. Shih swung her arm-blade up, deflecting the sword and causing it to run harmlessly down her forearm. Then a second blade grew from Shih's elbow, trapping the pirate's sword and with a sharp twist of her arm, snapping the blade like a twig. Shih used the pirate's momentary shock at the destruction of his weapon to give him a deep gouge across the torso, making him collapse to the ground screaming.

Two more tried to attack Shih from behind but she shouted "Scapula Porcupine!" and a dozen thin, razor-sharp spikes grew from each of the bone plates covering her shoulders, impaling both of the pirates. Shih's next assailant dropped before he got within five feet of her, courtesy of a bullet to the temple from Ryuuzaki.

Ryuuzaki for his part was raining hell down on the pirates. Not one of them had managed to climb more than ten feet up the trees before being shot and those on the ground had their limbs blown off by the bombs he was hurling down. The pirates trying to shoot him would have had about as much luck if they were just firing around randomly. As soon as Ryuuzaki fired a shot he seemed to vanish and appear on the other side of the clearing, lining up his sights on his next victim.

The fight was so one-sided that it took only around two minutes before Cusack's men decided to cut their losses. Despite the shouts from their captain to stand and fight the half-dozen or so left alive and relatively unmaimed, turned and ran from the clearing, trying to return to the town.

But it seemed unlikely that any of them would reach their destination, as gunshots still came from the direction they'd fled in. Ryuuzaki was clearly unwilling to let any of them slip through his fingers.

Cusack himself, however, didn't have the option of trying to escape, though it was obvious that by this stage he would have liked nothing more than to follow his crew's example. He was still locked in combat with Shih and it was clear to him that if he turned and tried to run he'd be impaled by her bones before he went three steps.

It would have been obvious to anyone watching, by this point, that the only reason the fight hadn't ended was that Shih was still toying with Cusack. All his guns were empty or out of reach and his sword was so notched from hitting Shih's armour that it was next to useless. Cusack himself wasn't in a much better condition, he was bleeding from the many cuts Shih had given him and was limping from a vicious kick to the knee.

But eventually, Shih had gotten all the fun she was going to get and lazily caught Cusack's sword in a bone gauntleted hand. She tore it out of his hands and threw it to the side then covering her fists with thick spiked plates she cried out "Phalange Knuckleduster!" and punched Cusack square in the face making him fly end over end and smash into a tree on the other side of the clearing. He made no move to get up.

Shih exhaled and retracted her bones back into her body. She made her way over to where Cusack lay and crouched down to make sure he really was out cold. Shih had just finished creating her bone manacles and had locked them securely around Cusack's wrists and ankles when Ryuuzaki walked back into the clearing.

"I see you won then," he remarked, looking at the restrained Cusack. He then took in the rest of the scene and sighed loudly as he saw how much of his property had been destroyed. The branch his laundry had been hanging on had broken and the clothing had fallen in a pool of blood. His tent had collapsed and had a good number of holes in it from both fire and shrapnel. Ryuuzaki only had himself to blame for that one since that had been the doing of one of his bombs. His cooking equipment, on the other hand, seemed fairly unscathed.

"Of course I did," Shih replied smugly. "It's not like these losers were any threat. So did any of the runners escape?"

"Hah!" he laughed "They were barely heading in the right direction. Picking them off was child's play."

"See how much easier killing pirates is with us teaming up?" Shih asked. "It couldn't have taken us more than ten minutes to kill all those pirates working together. You spent days just picking off mooks while you were by yourself."

Ryuuzaki crossed his arms and gave Shih an imperious look. "I'll have you know I could have charged in, guns blazing, with as much thought to my self-preservation as a particularly reckless lemming and killed them all. I didn't though because it would have been an unnecessary risk."

"Taking risks is what makes life fun!" Shih said "Would you really rather spend six boring hours hiding in a tree waiting to shoot someone who couldn't have seen or posed a threat to you even before you turned their brain into a fine pink mist. Or spend five minutes struggling for your life against twenty people, knowing a single wrong move would kill you?"

"I'd rather do the first than end up dying a pointless and easily preventable death with no one to blame but my own stupidity," Ryuuzaki stated. "Also most people wouldn't even slightly want to do either of those things."

"Who the fuck wants to be most people?" Shih said dismissively. "Most people are dull, unmemorable and never amount to anything. Besides, think of it like this. If you do make a mistake and die, it won't bother you for very long."

"What a comforting notion," Ryuuzaki deadpanned.

"So, back to our earlier conversation. Do I meet your standards for fighting ability?"

"You know what you're doing, I'll give you that," Ryuuzaki said. He then sighed and nodded. "Alright I'll come with you, but-" he was interrupted by Shih's celebrating. She jumped up and punched the air, whooping.

"Woohoo! Finally!" Shih grinned and stuck out her hand once more to Ryuuzaki. "Congratulations Ryuuzaki, you're officially the first mate of the Skeleton Pirates." Once again, he didn't take it.

"Let me finish," he said. "I'll go with you to the Grand Line, but I won't become a member of your crew. I will _never _be a pirate. I'm agreeing to be your ally, not your subordinate. Those are my terms and you can take them or leave them."

"I'll take them, but I hope you don't think you can do whatever you like, just because you're not "officially a crewmember," Shih said, lowering her hand. She continued, her tone completely serious, "If you're gonna stay on my ship, you'll work, do as I tell you and fight alongside us. Clear?"

"Don't worry, I'm no freeloader. Just remember that if I'm to stay on this crew there'll be no killing or pillaging against the innocent. It's limited to other pirates and Marines," Ryuuzaki said. "The second you or any other crew member does otherwise, I'll be out the door and they'll be in the sea with a hole in their head." This time he held out a hand to Shih. "Deal?"

Shih grinned, grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously. "Okay Ryuuzaki, you're _un_officially the first mate of the Skeleton Pirates!"

"Are you sure you want to give me that sort of authority?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.

Shih shrugged. "You were a Marine commander. You already know how to be a first mate," Shih went over to Cusack and seeing that he was beginning to stir from his unconsciousness, casually kicked him in the head and returned him to the land of dreams. She picked him up, tossed him over her shoulder and turned back to Ryuuzaki. "Okay Ryuuzaki, grab however much of your shit you think is worth salvaging and we'll head to my boat then turn this guy in," she said, gesturing at Cusack.

Ryuuzaki gathered up his muddy laundry and went to rummage through the wreckage of his tent. As he withdrew a thankfully undamaged box of explosives he glanced at Shih. "When you say boat …?"

"I mean boat. I haven't got a proper ship yet. I do have a jolly roger though," Shih replied brightly.

"Which as we all know is the most important thing for a pirate. Barely been a minute and I'm already beginning to regret my decision, that bodes well," Ryuuzaki grumbled as he placed his things in a large backpack.

"Give me a break, good ships are very expensive and my parents weren't willing to help me buy one. Stingy fucks," Shih said, muttering the last part.

"What unsupportive parents, unwilling to spend tens of millions so their daughter could start a life of crime and probably get herself killed," Ryuuzaki said, his voice thick with sarcasm.

"Hey, they were pirates themselves. They taught me how to fight and all the other stuff. They even gave me my Devil Fruit. They just weren't willing to spend their ill-gotten gains on me," Shih said.

Ryuuzaki fixed her with a flat look and said: "You know people like you are the reason that bullshit 'Criminal Blood' narrative exists."

Shih shrugged "Meh, that's a problem for other people. So, you ready to go," she said as Ryuuzaki closed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. Most of the bag's contents seemed to be ammunition.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Awesome!" Shih punched the air and started heading back towards the village where her boat was docked. "Come on, our adventure's only just begun!"

Ryuuzaki shook his head but still fell into step beside her.


End file.
